Xenonauts 2 November 2024 Update!

[Chris]

Hello everyone - it's time for the November development update for Xenonauts 2. Read on to see what we were working on last month!

Milestone 5 Prototype Update:
November was a productive month for us. All the core systems for Milestone 5 are now complete and we're currently in the process of testing the initial prototype, which we'll hopefully be releasing onto the Experimental branch later this week.

As always, the first Experimental build for a new Milestone is likely to be a pretty rough experience - although all the major new gameplay mechanics are present there'll probably be a lot of bugs, balance issues, and missing pieces of content that need to be patched in. If you'd rather have a more polished experience then it'd be best to wait until the final version of Milestone 5 arrives on the standard branches early next year!

Before we move on, I just want to be clear - although players will be able to unlock the final mission and complete the campaign once Milestone 5 is out, this will not be the final update for Xenonauts 2. We still want to add more polish to the game, so we're planning another major update before final release (likely focusing on usability / visual improvements / AI & game balance / modding / etc rather than adding additional game mechanics).

The Testing Process:
Most of our work this month has been addressing the numerous gameplay and stability issues encountered in our testing. Each new batch of fixes has allowed us to play further into the game, and we're currently testing the last month or two of the campaign (so fighting Battleships and doing the final mission).

So far we've been doing "strategic" playthroughs that involve auto-winning the tactical battles for speed (the average campaign is 30+ missions), but once we confirm it's possible to complete a "strategic" playthrough we'll shift to playing a full campaign including the tactical missions. Most game-breaking stability / balance issues tend to occur on the strategy layer, so hopefully this will go smoothly - but whether we release the prototype this week as planned really comes down to how many issues we encounter.

One major benefit of this testing is that all of these campaign playthroughs have given us plenty of opportunity to playtest and iterate the new strategy mechanics. We actually found the first iteration of the new Geoscape mechanics weren't quite as engaging as we'd hoped, so we expanded them a bit more and came up with something stronger!

Updated Geoscape Mechanics:
I personally think the updated Geoscape mechanics are a major improvement on what we have before, giving the player more things to interact with and a wider selection of possible strategies without being too overwhelming.

Players now gain a certain number of Operations Points per day (representing the off-screen work carried out Xenonaut agents), which can be spent on Strategic Operations or recruiting Supporters. Strategic Operations provide powerful instant effects, such as allowing the player to reduce Panic in a specific region or receive some extra cash / alien materials. They are not the most efficient way to spend Operations Points, but can still be very useful in the right circumstances!

Each of the six funding regions contains four Supporters, which represent key figures in the local government who can become aligned with either the Xenonauts or the Aliens. If they fall under Alien control and become Infiltrators (usually caused by successful Infiltration UFO missions), they will generate additional Panic in the local region each month - but if convinced to join the Xenonauts they will instead slightly reduce Panic in that region each month and provide a permanent bonus to your organisation.

Additionally, each region has a unique "region bonus" that is unlocked if you recruit all the supporters in that region (e.g. the North America bonus improves the quality of your starting soldiers, while the Soviet Russia one reduces your upkeep costs, etc). However, most regions also contain a single Elite Supporter who provides double the bonus of other Supporters of the same type; prioritising recruiting these Elite Supporters from the various different regions can be an alternative to racing towards a specific region bonus.

Although I think these additions work well, my own personal opinion only counts for so much - we'll be really interested to hear what the community think of the new systems once the prototype is out!

Other Additions:
We also had time to work on a few miscellaneous things this month. Firstly, the tactical combat now properly supports objects falling, so we've been able to enable destruction on building roofs. Explosions can now collapse these and cause units and items to fall onto the level below.

The illustration work is now complete on the updated Research screen background art (see above), and this month we'll be creating the "advanced" versions of this that are unlocked as you progress through the game and gain access to more advanced technology.

We're continuing to revamp the visuals of some of the weaker parts of the tactical combat. We started work on some new models for the Sebillian aliens, and we've also updated the appearance of quite a few assets in the Farm biome. Neither of these updates are currently present in Milestone 5 but both should be patched in before we finalise it.

We've made some further AI improvements and written some custom AI for the new missions added in Milestone 5, one of which is a wave defence mission. A few updated sounds have been added to the tactical combat for the new Biter alien, and also some new unique movement sounds for the MARS / ARES / Sentry Gun vehicles.

We also set up the proper Game Over screen for the various types of victory and loss. The final victory cinematic isn't ready yet, but the new UI has unique art / text / music / campaign stats / etc so still it's a lot more atmospheric than the plain popup you got in earlier versions of the game.

I think that covers everything. Well done for reading the wall of text, and hopefully we'll have a prototype ready to play in the next few days!

[Skitso]

Lab art looks like a nice improvement. Good work there!

Talking about the wall of text... waiting eagerly for the patch notes.

[gG-Unknown]

I am glad you keep walking.

I am excited of "a wave defence mission."

I've suggested  an idea of optimized mass oponents moves, but  I do it again : Baldurs gate 3 uses a  nice trick for numeerous weak oponents like rats, instead of move them one-by-one as usual in turn based style, they temporary brake rule  and  move all those small oponnents at once. So the whole swarm of oponents is moving at once, a bit of RTS in turn based strategy. In  combat there can be regular oponeents (like  Sebilian or Cleaner ), who has their very own turn, then swarm gets round-robin then 12 opponents moves at once.

 

Also, when you move the base  stones, I would like to hoghlight this idea again :

I like soldiers are dying a lot. That gives proper desperate feeling of whole fight. The problem is, difference between veteran and a new_hired soldier is too  much. Which means, people rather save scum than experience loss. Here is a better system : when trained soldier die, then a new soldier on recruit screen is added, the newly added soldier has half experience of dead  veteran. Therfore, later in game player can see quite capable recruits,  which means a snowball effect of dead veteran therfore low performance  recruit in next mission therfore more dead bodyes is lowered.

On  top, a new mechanic promoting saving bodies is introduced. Soldier who is KIA become "recycled" into better recruit (see above). Soldier MIA are not. Therfore player has gameplay reward/mechanic to bbring back dead soldiers from  raid mission to  home, to keep morale high, to appear experienced recruit. This mechanic  need to be introduced by help tootips or perhaps better Operation_center  lady.

 

Edited December 3, 2024 by gG-Unknown

[Chris]

6 hours ago, Skitso said:

Lab art looks like a nice improvement. Good work there!

Talking about the wall of text... waiting eagerly for the patch notes.

Ugh, I'm not looking forward to doing that. I've literally got over 600 completed tasks to sort through, and that doesn't include most of the balancing work I've done...

[Xeferah]

On 12/3/2024 at 10:23 PM, Chris said:

Ugh, I'm not looking forward to doing that. I've literally got over 600 completed tasks to sort through, and that doesn't include most of the balancing work I've done...

I do look forward to this. When the experimental branch has the milestone 5, I'd love to test the game again. It's great fun to play a couple dozen hours, wait for new content and repeat. I can't wait to see what has changed, and the patch notes really help me focussing on what to test in my games.

[Alienkiller]

Xeferah, yeah that´s my Intention too. Wait for the Milestone 5 and when it comes up, an new Testrun will begunn after an long break.

That cool Content / Features, which begunn with Milestone 3 or 4 and get a lot more in Milestone 5 & Higher are that what the Beta-Testers missing. Similar Content / Features for the Geoscape and Missions were tested already in an much lesser Status during the Standard-Betatests until the last Refit-Betatests & Milestone-Refits come up. 

It´s good to hear & read that such cool Contents / Features will come back. Only the still to low Timelimit for the Game is an big Problem. That the Beta-Testers from the first Hour get announced every time and the Community wanna have a lot more Gametime (minimum 720 Days), like the old X-Com Games have.

[Xeferah]

18 hours ago, Alienkiller said:

It´s good to hear & read that such cool Contents / Features will come back. Only the still to low Timelimit for the Game is an big Problem. That the Beta-Testers from the first Hour get announced every time and the Community wanna have a lot more Gametime (minimum 720 Days), like the old X-Com Games have.

For me personally that's not really a problem, but maybe I quit too early? I quit a game when I run out of research, have every continent at 0 unrest and there are no new UFO's coming. That was around day 250-300 or so for me. I fully expect that in the new milestone, this will be extended again. 

I'm also quite curious how the game is balanced again. Commander difficulty was great in the first 180 days or so, after that it became too easy/boring due to no change in enemy tactics. Overall, I'm really exited to see what has changed from milestone 4.

 

[gG-Unknown]

On 12/3/2024 at 3:09 PM, Chris said:

Hello everyone - it's time for, ... , Milestone 5  now complete and we're currently in the process of testing the initial prototype, which we'll hopefully be releasing onto the Experimental branch later this week.

 

[Chris]

It took slightly longer than hoped, but we got there in the end.

[Alienkiller]

On 12/10/2024 at 8:57 AM, Xeferah said:

For me personally that's not really a problem, but maybe I quit too early? I quit a game when I run out of research, have every continent at 0 unrest and there are no new UFO's coming. That was around day 250-300 or so for me. I fully expect that in the new milestone, this will be extended again. 

I'm also quite curious how the game is balanced again. Commander difficulty was great in the first 180 days or so, after that it became too easy/boring due to no change in enemy tactics. Overall, I'm really exited to see what has changed from milestone 4.

 

The prevoius Milestones had an Hardlimiter to give the Developers time to work on the new Contents / Features and the last 40% of the Game. The last 40% of the Game were since the big Beta-Tests the big Jobsite, the middle of the Game an medium Jobsite and the beginning Part the lowest Jobsite in filling up and get it best working. So Milestone 1 to 4 had hard Gamelimiters after a while, where no more show up.

But with Milestone 5 you can play to the End. How good it will be after the Refit of existing Contents / Features of the Storyline we will see. In the complete unlimited Betas etc. you had to finisch the Aliens in 350 to 360 Days (about 1 Year), which is impossible. The old X-COM and new XCOM as well as UFO ET Gold / Platinum gives you about 1,5 to 2 years (540 to 720 Days). The only Games which gives you up to 900, maximum 1.200 Days (2,5 to 3 Years) are UFO 2 ET and if I rememember me correctly Phoexnix Point.

The to limited Time for the Endgame-Operation were in Xenonauts 2 to low. Hope that is fixed with the new Storyparts-Refits. There the UFO ET-Row have an very good compromise to raise the Storyline-Invasion-Difficulty. The first Option is to reach an Research-Level and the second Option is to shoot down to much UFOs with Bombing them / ground Missions, before you reach the Research-Level for the next Storyliine-Dificulty-Step.